Part 17 (1/2)

Joy watched Miss Maddox with fascinated eyes. ”I'm so _young_!”

she thought forlornly, ”and all the rest of them are so dreadfully grown-up!”

She felt as if Gail Maddox, with her brilliant, careless sentences, and her half-insolent confidence, owned everybody there much more than _she_ did: and she felt little and underdressed and outcla.s.sed to a point where even Gail might pity her, and probably did.... And if there is a more abjectly awful feeling than that the Other Girl pities you, n.o.body has discovered it yet.... Gail might even know how much of a pretender she was. If John--but no. John wasn't like that.

He was--”fantastically honorable,” she had heard Phyllis call it.

John hadn't told--he wouldn't tell if his own happiness depended on it.... And Joy let her thoughts stray off into a maze of wondering as to whether she would rather have her self-respect saved by not having Gail know, or whether, if it would break John's heart to be separated forever from Gail, she oughtn't to tell him to tell.

Gail, lounging in a low chair she had dragged across the waxed floor in the face of all outcries, with one electric-blue-shod foot stretched out before her, looked exactly the person you'd care least to have know anything they could scorn you about. She could scorn so well and so convincingly, Joy felt, listening to her. There wouldn't be a thing left of you when she got through.

”I feel as alone as Robinson Crusoe,” thought Joy forlornly.

She rose restlessly and picked up the tray which had borne their illegal sandwiches, with the idea of carrying it and herself out of sight. She wanted a minute to brace herself in.

As she did it, Allan rose, too, unexpectedly, as he did most things.

”Here, I'll take some of those,” he offered, and helped her carry the debris out.

They set down their burdens on a pantry table, whence three scandalized maids whisked them somewhere else again, gazing the while reproachfully at the invaders.

”I haven't any use for that girl,” stated Allan plainly, as they went back. ”Don't let her fuss you, Joy.”

Joy looked gratefully up at him. The whole world, then, didn't prefer Gail Maddox to her!

”She makes me feel exactly like a small dog that has stolen a bone and got caught,” Joy acknowledged directly, with a little shamefaced laugh.

”She'll do her best in that line,” responded Allan, who seemed to have no great affection for the lady. ”Don't let her bother you.

He's your bone--hang on to him. In short, sic 'em!”

They both laughed, and Joy came back with her bronze head high and an access of fresh courage. She sat down this time between John and the cousin, whose name she had not heard. But she began talking hard to him. Occasionally she tossed John, fenced in beside her, a cheerful word. He seemed perfectly satisfied at first, but the cousin did not. He wanted Joy all to himself, it appeared, and a fiance more or less seemed to have no bearing on the case, as far as he was concerned.

Presently John woke up to this fact and began the effort to repossess himself of his lawful property. Joy cast a mischievous glance at Allan, sitting on the arm of his wife's chair (chairs had become the order of the day), and Allan grinned happily, by some means telegraphing the situation to Phyllis. Every one was happy except John, and perhaps Gail, who presently eyed the three and used her usual weapon of lazy frankness.

”It makes me furious to see both of you making violent love to Joy Havenith,” she said indolently. ”Clarence, go start the victrola, my good man. This must be put a stop to.”

Clarence lifted himself from the floor by Joy, but he calmly took her hand along with him, and raised her, too.

”She's going to christen the floor with me,” he informed his cousin.

”Come on, Miss Joy!”

The isolation that ordinarily doth hedge an engaged girl, where men are concerned, seemed to trouble Clarence not at all. He was, by the way, in spite of the fact that he would some day be too stout, one of the best-looking men who ever lived. He had a good deal of his cousin's lazy a.s.surance--in him it sometimes verged on impudence, but never beyond the getting-away-with point--and a heavenly smile.

His other name was, unbelievably, Rutherford, which almost took the curse off the Clarence, as he said, but not quite. And if he had gone into the movies he would have made millions, beyond a doubt.

He drew Joy across the floor with him, in her green-and-silver draperies, and began to wind the victrola, which had been tucked into a nook where Mrs. Hewitt had vainly hoped it would be quite hidden. There was to be an orchestra afterwards for the authorized dancing.

Clarence put on ”Poor b.u.t.terfly,” and encircling Joy proceeded to dance away with her.

”But I don't know how to dance,” she gasped as she felt herself being drawn smoothly across the floor.

”That doesn't matter, Sorcerette, dear,” said Clarence blandly.

”Just let go--be clay in the hands of the potter. I'll do the dancing for two. Hear me?”